It Was Good While It Lasted

From my youngest adult years, I remember my grandmother encouraging me to take the Civil Service exam and get a “good government job” with benefits, a decent salary, and job security.  It might have been an opening at the post office, or a courthouse secretarial job – just get a “good government job.” Perhaps she was remembering her own experience in early adulthood and a very good time in her life when she was truly independent and had money.

Lillian Christensen (left) and Pauline Cooper

Beadle County Courthouse, Huron, SD

The year was 1933.  Everything was looking up for Lillian Christensen.  Though the Great Depression was in full swing – low crop prices, economic crash, and extreme drought, Lillian’s future was looking bright.  She began working at the new U. S. Crop Allotment office in the Beadle County courthouse in Huron, South Dakota. The purpose of the new office was to administer the national, voluntary program by which farmers would be paid to only plant certain crops on a certain number of acres.  This program was under the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and part of the New Deal.  Mr. Irven Eitreim took charge of the office staffed by Pauline Cooper, a stenographer; Lillian, who was a clerk, and another young woman named Adaline.  It was the duty of the county office to collect and process all the data associated with the program and write up contracts with the farmers. 

Lillian on her apartment roof

For Lillian, it was a great opportunity, getting a “good government job” in place of the live-in nanny job she had for a number of years.  She and Pauline, who had become close friends, also became roommates in a nice modern apartment in downtown Huron, thanks to their good salaries and steady jobs.

Lillian’s beau, Bill Knutz, was a farmhand who did not make a great deal of money so Lillian’s job was a blessing.  As long as Lillian was single, that is.  Most employers preferred to save the jobs for single women who had no choice but to support themselves.  Romantic sparks were also flying between Pauline and their boss, Irv Eitreim.

It was December of 1935, and big changes were in store.  Pauline was on an extended vacation in California and Adaline didn’t seem to be employed there anymore, leaving Lillian with the office responsibilities. It was then that everything changed.

In Pauline’s absence, on December 28, 1935, Lillian and Bill decided to elope to be secretly and quietly married.  It was so quiet, in fact, that afterward Bill parked his car a couple of blocks down the street and walked to the apartment to spend time with his wife, in order to “save their good names.”

But on a bigger scale, the U. S. Supreme Court was taking a closer look at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and specifically the Crop Allotment program.  The court ruled it unconstitutional to tax the food processors and reallocate that money to farmers, so on January 6, 1936 it all came to an end and offices were to be closed.

In a letter postmarked Jan. 15, 1936 from Los Angeles, Pauline wrote to Lillian:

“Lillian Dear:

I haven’t written you before because I was just so upset and worried that I didn’t know what to write and thought that just keeping still was better than letting you know how I really feel.  However I had a letter from Irv. this P. M. that made me feel better.  I’m so glad he is going to get something else even though you and I are really in a spot.  It certainly has taken the pep out of me but in a way I’m sort of glad that I was out here when it happened.  It sort of is a dirty trick though to leave you with all the dirty working of finishing it all up without any pay.  Anyway I’m certainly not regretting my trip out here.  I haven’t looked for work and don’t think I will until I hear further from Irv.  I really and truly want to come to Huron and don’t want to stay here very badly even if I could find something to do.  Maybe if I could have you and Irv out here I would feel different about it all.  It makes me sick to think about losing the apartment---all I can say is hang on to it as long as you can.  Maybe something else will turn up.  If I don’t get back before the end of the month I’ll write my folks to get my things.  I’m sure you know how everything is divided and I’ll also split on the bills.”

She ends with “I guess there is nothing we can do but hold our chins up and take it…”

It all had a happy ending though – Irv found a job at the South Dakota State University Extension Department in nearby Brookings, South Dakota.  Pauline also found work in Brookings “just typing” as they did when they first started typing wheat contracts with the Crop Allotment office.  Pauline and Irv were eventually married.  However, in a letter Irv wrote to Lillian a few weeks after the office closure he said he was “floored” when Pauline told him about Lillian and Bill’s marriage, and that he shouldn’t have been so surprised that Lillian was not too concerned about losing her job.  He went on to say that he will never forget the years they worked together and will never know a more pleasant, congenial and efficient person than Lillian.  “Tell Bill I think he is a ‘lucky cuss’” Irv said.   

It’s hard to say how long Bill and Lillian could have kept their marriage quiet if the Supreme Court had ruled differently, or what their long-term plans had been.

Lillian and Pauline continued their friendship for many more years even though their lives took completely opposite turns.  Irv’s career with the United States Foreign Service took them all over the world, while Bill and Lillian settled down on a farm just outside of Huron.  But both of them had their “happily ever after” and Lillian had her “good government job.”

What I Really Threw Away Today

 Well, I had to throw away my measuring cups today.   

Besides being measuring cups I actually liked, these were the first ones I owned when I initially set up housekeeping at the age of 18.  It's quite amazing that they lasted this long - they were still structurally fine but the silver stuff on the inside was getting flaky and corroded.  But these cups were more than just measuring cups.

They are following other vintage kitchen gadgets into the landfill.  The old double boiler, and the electric frying pan with the leg that kept breaking off...  That frying pan... the leg would break off and Grandpa would glue it, and it would break off again, over and over, until Grandpa put a couple of screws in it.  I remember him saying that last fix would outlast the frying pan, and he was right about that.  All of these items, and more, were from my first little house.  Bit by bit, my grandparents helped me get that little place furnished and functional.  They went through their house and gave me furniture they weren't using, went to estate sales where they got me a bed, a vintage stove and a washing machine, and drove to endless rummage sales where kitchen gadgets like the double boiler and the measuring cups (along with things I could not identify) came from.  As I was moving in to that little house I'd walk in the door and find something that hadn't been there the last time.  I would have been up the proverbial creek without them and using these little kitchen items over the last half century always made me feel just a little bit closer to them.  

I think I'm down to one special kitchen item left, and that is her biscuit cutter which I treasure because that was actually hers and used for years and years.  Silly, yes.  But every time I used one of these old items I was reminded that I was deeply loved by those two incredible people, and so much that they did all that for me at their own expense (on a fixed income).  So they were more than measuring cups to me.  But time marches on. 

The House in Princeville

What follows is another sketch from my great-grandmother's (Elvirta Graves Knutz) book of sketches.  She sketched many of the homes she had lived in over the years - from her first home (below) to the last farm they lived on.  

This home, built by her father Tom Graves, was located a short distance northwest of Princeville, Illinois (see map) on Section 3 of Princeville township, the south half of the southeast quarter.  The land was given to Tom by his father, William Graves, who left an 80-acre farm to each of his children, most of these farms in the same township.  His three daughters married and stayed in the area; his son Simon sold his farm and moved to Nebraska, son Austin sold and moved to Minnesota, son Tom sold and went over the county line to Stark county before moving his family to South Dakota.  The one remaining son, Oscar, purchased some of his siblings' farms and eventually his father's, and remained in Princeville township.

The sketch below was her home from birth until age 11 when the family moved to Stark County.  Below that, a photo of the house with the family in front of it.

The Tom and Nettie (Lair) Graves family, from left: Lulu, Maude, Delbert, Elvirta, Nettie and Tom.

The location of the home, northwest of Princeville, Illinois, is outlined in red.  This map is from 1896 - William Graves owned the land to the north, E. O. Graves (Tom's brother Oscar) owned the land to the north of that; east of that M. M. Cox (Tom's sister Madeline) owned that land and to the north of that A. E. Graves (Tom's brother Austin) had his farm.  Sarah Cox's land (another sister) was located in Section 4, and sister Cynthia Evans' land was in Section 9.  Brother Simon had sold his land and relocated by 1885.

The History of a House

It was spring of 1917 when Will and Elvirta Knutz and their two little boys moved to their farm southwest of Huron, South Dakota, on the Virgil Road.  Many things happened on that farm - most notably it was where their son Bill met the love of his life, Lillian Christensen, who lived on a farm around the corner.  The Knutz family moved to the farm in March and were able to purchase it in June - a big step for the young family.  

Life must have been lonely - busy, but lonely - for Virta.  But it was under these circumstances that her creativity came out.  She wrote about her life, the events she witnessed, and her children.  She drew pencil sketches as well which recorded their family's history.  And that leads us to the history of this house.  Their home.  Their dream, and the death of that dream exactly eight years later.

Above is a sketch of the house, done by Virta, and unfortunately undated.  This, along with sketches of their other homes were done on the back pages of an autograph album with the earliest entry in 1904.  The last of the house sketches was from their home they move to in 1930, their last farm before moving to town in 1958. 

Above, Virta is pictured in their neat, tidy home with her two sons, Howard (left) and Bill (then called "Willie.") In this photo, she would have been pregnant with their third child, Richard. 

Above, Virta with Howard and Bill.

Below, Will enjoys a quiet evening with his sons.

The 1920s had set the stage for what was to come in the Great Depression.  Volatile farm prices, drought, locus infiltrations... it all took its toll.  In March of 1925, Will and Virta lost their farm and the life they'd built there.  After that, they lived in a series of rented farms throughout the area.

In the early 2000s, I was in Huron and decided to look for the old house that was such an important part of their lives.  It sat back off the road quite aways, the path to it overgrown with weeds and heavy brush.  The beautiful trees that once provided the family with welcome shade were overgrown and half-dead, almost hiding the structure behind them.  The house itself was rife with rotting wood and unstable flooring, the door partially off its hinges, the interior hit hard by vandals.  I stepped inside and took a look around and noted the small size of the front room compared to what we're used to today.  By the time the Knutz family was forced to move to another farm, they were a family of six and imagining them in that space was a little overwhelming.  Yes, it was small - but it was theirs.  Until it wasn't.

Above - the Knutz farm as it was in the early 2000s.

In walking away from the deteriorating house and taking one long look back, I could almost see Virta's pretty curtains in the windows, with her standing there waving goodbye as was her habit when her visitors left.  

While losing their farm on the Virgil Road must have been devastating, and the hard situation of having to move to several new, rented farms in the next few years, the story does have a happy ending.  In 1929 they were able to buy a new farm fairly close to their old neighbors and friends.  While times were still financially challenging through the Depression, they were able to keep their farm until they retired in 1958 and moved to town.

Just Me = Not Them

Aunt Lulu Graves... there aren't too many of us left who remember her.  She was my great-grandmother's spinster sister, and a woman of idiosyncrasies.  She led a colorful life, and not necessarily in a good way.  At one time in my early life I recall that she used to sell greeting cards as a side hustle - the kind where you order them pre-printed with your name on them - I'm sure quite a concept back in the 1960's.  I remember them because every Christmas we all got the outdated proof samples in place of a regular Christmas card.  "Merry Christmas from Tom and Gertrude Forrester."  Who??  Apparently she was not a customer herself, as we never saw one with her actual name on it.

A Pilgrim Story

Tracing my family history led me back four centuries to a pilgrim named Edward Bangs, the man said to anchor every Bangs family line in America.  Young Edward was born in 1592 in Panfield, England. He was a shipwright by trade and apparently had some education as he had signed his name on several documents over the years.

What exactly made Edward want to pull up stakes, get on a cramped wooden boat and sail over the Atlantic ocean to a completely foreign place is beyond me.  A sense of adventure? Tired of the lack of religious freedom in England?  We’ll probably never know but he tried three times to do it so we can say with some certainty that he really wanted to be here.

First, a quick and oversimplified explanation of the situation. The pilgrims, before leaving England, had an arrangement with investors who put up the capital for the soon-to-be-formed colony. The pilgrims, or “planters” as they were called, were to establish a settlement (Plymouth Colony) and build it up for seven years and at the end of that time the assets would be divided between colonists and investors.

Under the agreement, three ships brought these “planters”: the Mayflower in 1620, the Fortune in 1621 and the Anne in 1623.  No other ships brought passengers under this agreement for the next seven years.  It was the third ship, the Anne, that arrived in July 1623 with 32 year old Edward Bangs aboard.  Legend has it that in England, shipwright Bangs had been called upon to get the ship seaworthy for her voyage across the Atlantic, and decided to join them.

 Aboard the second ship was the Robert Hicks family.  Hicks had been a successful fellmonger (hide and wool merchant) in England.  Edward married his daughter, Lydia, in 1633 and they had a son, John, shortly after which Lydia passed away.  In 1635, Edward married Rebecca Hobart, whose widowed father came to the New World just two years prior with Rebecca and her brother and sister.  Edward and Rebecca went on to have nine children.

Edward served on numerous juries, and oftentimes acted as an overseer of others.  His name appears over and over in the Plymouth colony records in a number of different capacities. He served on the staff of Gov. Bradford with Captain Myles Standish, Thomas Prence, Mr. Howland, John Alden, Stephen Hopkins, William Collier, Manaseh Kempton, Joshua Pratt and Stephen Tracy.

When the seven years were up, the colony was divided between the men. It was the original settlers, including Robert Hicks and Edward Bangs, that became owners of the Plymouth Colony, in common.  However, there wasn’t enough land to divide. England granted them more land, and new settlements were made and new settlers came in.  There was a lot of fussing about rights, who paid what, etc.  Finally in 1640 an agreement was reached and the Colony was to reimburse settlers who had to pay out their own money to acquire land. Under this agreement the original settlers were to select 2-3 tracts of land that they wanted in specific areas and no one else could claim that land.  What was left over belonged to the Colony and the Colony Court would decide on the disposition of it. 

There was only one problem (well, two if you were Edward Bangs.) (But more on that later) First, the land was not exactly uninhabited.  Indians lived there.  Pilgrims were quick to concede that the Indians were the rightful owners of the land and that they could not just take it from them. It was concurred that they’d need to purchase the land in order to get rightful title.  These colonists were the only ones with a legal right to purchase the land, and there might have been no problem had they done so in a prompt manner.  But since they’d already established homes within Plymouth Colony, there didn’t seem to be any hurry.  The wording of the agreement said that the right to purchase the land was theirs and their descendants’ “for all time.”  And the ones who did promptly purchase the land weren't in a big hurry to occupy it. 

As more and more settlers came to the area, the interest in this “reserved” land was greatly increased. The chief of the Indians in this area was Mattaquason and the new settlers began purchasing this reserve land from him. Meanwhile, this land had been promised to the colonists in the earlier agreement; some had put off purchasing for years because they had been granted the rights “for all time.”  Others had purchased right away but not settled on it.  At any rate, new settlers were buying it.

Unfortunately for Edward Bangs, his land was in this reserve.  And just when you think things couldn’t get any more complicated, enter William Nickerson, another settler from England.  Nickerson was not a colonist but came over independently with his wife, minor children, and adult children and their families, desiring to found a new, private settlement for themselves.   They left England aboard the ship John and Dorothy in 1637.  He was tired of the oppression of the King of England. 

Great, but the only problem was he bought a lot of reserved land from Chief Mattaquason. And some of the land he bought had already been purchased by Edward Bangs.

And so began years and years of court hearings, trials, fines, and, due to William Nickerson’s extreme belligerence and disdain for the King's law, time spent in the stockade and jail.  Edward Bangs was found to be the wronged party, but his land was already settled by others so the Court awarded him land elsewhere and he eventually settled in Nauset, which was later renamed Eastham, Massachusetts. 

I mentioned before that if you were Edward Bangs, you had two problems. And the second problem? Edward’s granddaughter, Mary Bangs, married William Nickerson’s grandson Thomas Nickerson. That would have made for some interesting family reunions.

In the end, Edward Bangs lived a good and profitable life filled with community service in Eastham, as he had in Plymouth Colony.  And William Nickerson spent most of his life fighting for the land he believed was rightly his, and also a life filled with civic duty.  Edward died in 1678, at the age of 86 and William died about 1690 at about age 84 and is buried on the land he fought so hard for.

 

**Note: This is oversimplified and severely edited because no one wants to be here reading this into next week. :) Plus, all the "goings on" were complicated.  All images used were generated by CoPilot and are copyright-free.

Tom Graves, Master Carpenter

 

Tom Graves could make just about anything.  In his home near Princeville, Illinois and later in eastern South Dakota he built numerous homes with his son Delbert.  In Esmond, South Dakota he and Delbert built a large, two-story brick building known as “The Big Store” with a double store front on the main floor and the Graves Dance Hall located on the second story.  He built many pieces of furniture for his family members, including the rocking chair I rocked his great-great-great-great granddaughters in.  But when he wasn’t busy building these items, he liked to whittle and carve. 

Where and when Tom picked up this hobby, I don’t know, yet I can picture him sitting on his back step all alone, as the sun went down at the end of his work day, whittling on a piece of wood.  But the fascinating thing about his carvings is that he worked with any material he could get, not just wood.  He created a number of small items from pipestone, which is also known as catlinite.  This material is a soft sedimentary rock best known for being used by Native American tribes for creating ceremonial pipes, and is an attractive brown/red in color.  The best known deposit of this is in the Pipestone Quarry district in Minnesota. 

Though born in Ohio, Tom grew up just outside of Princeville in Peoria county, Illinois near the Stark county line.  He married a local girl, Nettie Belle Lair, daughter of Lawson and Margaret Lair.  They lived on an 80 acre farm given to him by his father, William Graves.  He also lived in Stark county for a few years before moving to Esmond, South Dakota, and then to nearby Carthage, South Dakota where he lived out the remainder of his life. 

 

Two of his pipestone carvings are dated August 30, 1901, when he and his family went to Pipestone, Minnesota to thresh, hence his ample supply of material.  He made a number of carved pieces during his stay there.

The family may have returned to Pipestone in the early fall of 1912, when it was rumored that they ran a hotel and restaurant for a year before returning to South Dakota. 

Tom gave up building homes and large structures after his son Delbert died in World War I and focused on building furniture and other smaller pieces.  He was not only a master carpenter and woodworker, but a kind and loving man whose family meant everything to him.  I wonder how many of life's problems he solved while sitting out there steps, watching the sun go down.